Next Time You Make Scalloped Potatoes, Add This Ingredient Right To The Sauce

You're probably aware that there's a seemingly endless array of ways to cook potatoes. Scalloped potatoes is less common, but just like scalloped corn, this retro side dish is packed with flavor. There are no real scallops, but you're instead baking sliced potatoes into a casserole dish with a milk or cream-based sauce. These sauces can be fancy and seasoned béchamel sauces which are creamy and French, but those are intimidating to make if you're more of an amateur home chef. Alternatively, some people just use canned soup as the "sauce" instead. Does this work? We spoke to Rachel Kirk, a recipe developer for Laughing Spatula, who said it absolutely can work.

Now, Kirk made an important clarification in our exclusive chat that canned soup won't get you quite the same level of quality as the professional cream sauces used at restaurants. However, baking with canned soup can still get you tasty results. According to Kirk, "You can definitely use canned soup for scalloped potatoes, though it won't be as rich or velvety as using a roux-based béchamel type sauce. If you go the canned soup route, I recommend adding half and half to thin out the soup, otherwise the soup can be so thick it won't cook the potatoes evenly." For a full casserole dish, you shouldn't need more than a single soup can cut with milk or half and half (some recipes add in gravy).

Naturally, your choice of soup matters. Most things fortunately go well with potatoes, and you could probably make an argument for multiple canned soups, besides those discontinued Campbell's soups we wish would return. However, you do want a cream-based soup rather than something like tomato soup, because scalloped potatoes require a cream sauce and this soup is your direct substitute. Rachel Kirk tells The Takeout exclusively that a roux made from flour and butter mixed with milk to create a béchamel sauce is the most ideal option, for those who have the time. But cans of cream-based sauce from the grocery store contain milk and often contain flour as well (although it's easy to imagine that the quality of ingredients is lower), so they are comparable. They do lack butter, so you might consider adding some butter to the soup and potatoes yourself. 

Common choices for scalloped potatoes include cream of celery soup and cream of mushroom soup, which provide some extra fillings that'll blend easily with the potatoes. Campbell's specifically also makes cream of onion and cream of chicken soups, depending on how much you want to mix things up. On that note, you can also use a cheese-based soup which also contains that prerequisite milk and flour, although this will shift your scalloped potatoes closer to a similar potato casserole dish called au gratin. Once you've chosen a soup, you can add extras like black pepper and paprika and zesty peppers that add zip to any potato casserole.